“Our workshop showed how vibrant, plural and interdisciplinary the global community of PhD students and Early Career Scholars in the field of military innovation is, and we saw a clear repressed demand for networking and exchanging ideas within this community. Presentations covered a wide range of relevant contemporary topics of utmost importance to support policymaking and address rising challenges to defence policies and military organisations worldwide”
Raphael Lima, PhD Student at the Department of War Studies.
06 June 2023
King's PhD students host workshop on military innovation
PhD students from the School of Security Studies brought together senior scholars and policymakers for a two-day workshop on military innovation.
With representatives from Europe, Latin America and Asia, the King's Doctoral Workshop on Military Innovation and Defence Reform provided a platform for students to share their perspectives on areas such as artificial intelligence, air and space strategies, new technologies, national defence strategies and defence procurement with senior scholars and policymakers.
Alongside presentations from King’s scholars and students, the event featured talks from Gabriela Cox, Head of the Defence Innovation Unit in the UK MOD, Professor Andrew Dorman, Editor of International Affairs, and Peter Watkins, Former Director General of Strategy & International and Director General of Security Policy in the UK MOD.
“Recent global developments have created new challenges for military organisations. Think, for example, of changing civil-military relations or emerging technologies like artificial intelligence. The King’s Doctoral Workshop did a terrific job bringing scholars with different disciplinary backgrounds and experiences together to explore how innovative policies and defence reforms could address such challenges in democratic, effective, and sustainable ways”
Alies Jansen, PhD candidate at the University of Leiden.
The King's Doctoral Workshop on Military Innovation and Defence Reform represents the third successful collaboration activity of the Military Innovation Network, which plans to publish a special edition in an academic journal and expand the network with PhD students from other universities. For more information, contact militaryinnovationnetwork@kcl.ac.uk